A water colour tree with a creek

This is how I set myself up!

I actually clean my table top for painting. Then I put out I have a white plate as my palette, a cup as my clean water source, my kids watercolour painting kit, my favourite travel watercolour kits, a cotton bud, the photo I want paint and the music on my iPad.

And a glass of water for me - to hydrate.

Oh, yes and an eye dropper.  I used to use a glass eye dropper, with a rubber suction top, a beautiful little thing, I cannot find them at the moment. Now I use a plastic one that is available at Eckersleys online or in their shops, very cheap.

 The most important thing for you is - don’t put your paint brush into your drink.Using watercolour is about strength of pigment in your water, and how your pigments behave.  Art Spectrum Watercolour grades their products performance in opaqueness: Semi-transparent or opaque, Staining or Granulating- which means the paint separates into tiny granules and sinks to the paper and gives what is called separation.

Draw with a rough pencil (or pen if you’re confident).

Don’t get hung up on placement it’s just a piece for paper - not an heirloom. 

White pages are the creative person’s biggest fear - just make one mark on the page. 

Also, remember take movement all the way to the edges and off the page. Even though everything for the first couple of centimetres will be under the mount, if you decide to frame and hang this work.

I have played with a few different blues for the sky. The very light blue has lots of water added to it, the darkest blue has very little water in it at all!

Using the paint in the thin wash the palest blue or green)I map in from my drawing.

I then move into other colours to give myself the confidence to find the darkest points and the lightest points.  I block in a light ultramarine blue wash for the sky, some light greens and blues for the

I need to block in more foliage and where the grass is growing.  Actually this photo is quite old, and the ground is dryer now.

using thin washes I start making the tree and where the grass and stream are.

I don’t think I will change it too much though.

Once in a while you must move away from your painting.  You step backwards if you’re lucky enough to have easel.

Maybe, you don’t, so improvise, like this, and use a bookcase shelf or anything that you can prop against. A basket is good too

i’m using a basket to lean my water color page against it. I stand a long way back to see how it is going. I forgot completely to paint in the sky on the left hand side of my tree!

I paint another two layers of ultramarine blue into the sky.

 I also mix some grey greens to give varying shades to the tree foliage. I put in the shadows of the trees into the water reflections, and make the break in the bank, where the water meets the bank, b with a dark brown mixed the ultramarine blue.

I have a bit of a problem remembering to paint every where! there is sky missing again!

 I put some blue reflections in the water, from the sky colour. This will tie the sky and water compositionally together.

That will do for the moment. I’m getting a bit stiff with with everything. Let me know if I have’t put in enough information, just pop a comment into my contact notes and I will address your questions on the blog page